


Of Maggots And Men

by Seicchanart



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Character Study, F/M, Kidnapping, Not Beta Read, Two Face!Rachel AU, somewhat i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:55:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27423820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seicchanart/pseuds/Seicchanart
Summary: Rachel wants to know more about her now partner in crime, but instead she ends up telling him about herself.(a twoface!Rachel fic)
Relationships: Jonathan Crane/Rachel Dawes
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	Of Maggots And Men

It was raining. The sky was grey with clouds and it was dark and silent outside. Well except for the heavy tapping of the rain pouring down onto Gotham City.

A sigh left Rachel’s lips and she pulled the blanket over her tighter, leaning back against the wall behind the bed. She was glad that they had found a new hideout a few days ago. Being outside now would have been horrible. Still, there was that now all familiar feeling of bitter emptiness raging inside of her. And it was cold.

Rachel didn’t bother turning around when she heard the door opening. She counted the steps, five, until the bed creaked and bent down under the weight of someone sitting down. With another sigh, she reluctantly turned around to face Jon.

His hair was wet from the rain, though it seemed like he had already dried it somewhat. He was taking off his pretty soaked jacket, letting it fall to the floor, and… he had brought two steaming mugs, now sitting on the bedside table. Rachel knitted her brows (well, brow, really.) together.

“Is that for me?”

Jon let out a short, breathy laugh while taking off his shoes. 

“Of course. You know I don’t drink tea.”

She rolled her eyes and reached out for the mug with the lighter, clear liquid in it. It smelled like peppermint. Her favorite.

“I thought you might be cold.”, Jon added and took a sip from his own mug, filled with black coffee. 

Rachel hummed in response and began drinking. Since when was he so considerate? And since when was she not worried about the possibility of him slipping something into her drink? She unconsciously leaned her head to the left and gulped down the tea. It was nice and hot, and it tasted good. A slight hint of warmth started spreading in her chest, and she told herself it was because of the temperature of the tea only.

Her gaze fell back on Jon, who had now placed his mug back on the table. He was looking at her, too, with an expression she couldn’t quite place. What was he thinking about? She felt her heart sink when he leaned in. What were they even doing? Softly, she placed her hands over his lips and pushed him away. She saw something flash in his eyes. Was it hurt from being rejected? Or something else entirely?

“No.”, she said, looking at her own hands to avoid his eyes. “You probably taste like coffee.”

Jon snorted at that and let himself fall down onto the bed, next to her.

“I’ll never understand why you hate it so much.”

Rachel shivered. Coffee was gross, and _she_ would never understand how he could stand drinking the stuff. Black, nonetheless. Well, he also didn’t like tea, so she should already be aware of his bad taste.

Her eyes darted to her mug, and the swirling, clear brown tea inside it. What else did she know about him? He was weird and off-putting to live with. He had a PhD in both psychology and biochemistry. He often dug himself into his work for weeks on end without sleeping or eating. He liked spicy food. He wore dress shirts and ties most of the time, even when he was just staying at home (which was probably due to the fact that he didn’t own a lot of other clothes). He had a shit ton of books. He cut his own hair and was basically blind without his glasses or contact lenses (which he wore underneath his mask most of the time). He didn’t like sweet food, but he did like dark chocolate. He apparently didn’t watch any TV, at all.

All of that she had assimilated over the last three months she had now been living with him (in several different places, of course. After all, the police were looking for the both of them now). She didn’t know anything about his life before she had met him. Why did that thought fill her with a strange melancholy?

She looked at him, staring at the ceiling, apparently lost in thought himself. Had he ever dated in his youth? For some reason, she couldn’t picture him like that. What had his childhood been like? Who were his parents? Was he even from Gotham? Had he always been a monster, obsessed with the fears of others? Probably not. When had it started? What had started it? And why was she so curious about all this? 

Rachel took another sip. She still felt fine, albeit a bit warmer. He hadn’t slipped anything into her drink, after all.

“Jon?”

He rolled onto his side, looking up at her.

“Yes?”

She paused for a moment.

“What was your childhood like?”

She wasn’t looking at him, but she could feel him flinch next to her. So it _was_ a sore topic, after all. His voice was quiet, almost husky, when he answered.

“Why do you ask?”

Rachel looked at him, felt herself getting caught in his bright blue gaze. It lacked a bit of the intensity it usually had. The look in Jon’s eyes was what made her tell the truth.

“I want to know more about you.”

He rolled onto his back again, looking back at the ceiling. They spent a few minutes in silence, before he finally answered.

“Well, I don’t know much about _you_ , either.”

Rachel frowned. Was he trying to change the subject?

“You were basically there when I had my breakdown.”

Jon laughed at that. 

“Your ‘breakdown’, huh? Well, I guess I was. But then again-”, he looked at her, and the intensity in his gaze was back. Rachel almost flinched. “You were there at my, ah, ‘breakdown’, too.”

Pictures of Arkham’s basement flashed through her memory and she started chewing on her lip. Of course. The moments they had both officially gave in to the dark. Their… well, breakdowns.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know that. Besides, you’ve been doing bad stuff in secret long before that.”

Jon grinned at her. “Point taken. Still, I know about as much about you as the other way around.”

Rachel was starting to feel frustrated. Why was he so good at turning a conversation where he wanted it to go? She knew the answer to that, of course.

“I didn’t have a very interesting or special life.”, she muttered. “Just a normal childhood. Well, as normal as it gets in Gotham City.”

Jon hummed in response. “So no childhood trauma?”

 _I didn’t say_ that _._ Rachel stared into her cup, trying to come up with an answer to that. What would be the most plausible thing to say? Well, ‘no’, but for some reason it didn’t seem difficult for him to notice when she was lying.

“Well…”, she started, after a way too long pause. “Everyone’s had one or two bad things happen to them.”

Jon turned to face her again, and suddenly she felt trapped.

“Such as?”

She knew she didn’t have to answer him. After all, she had asked him first. She also knew that it probably wasn’t very smart to lay herself bare in front of a man like him. 

She had always wanted someone to share things with, like she had with Bruce when they were kids. But even that faded when they grew older, and now she couldn’t even look Bruce in the eye without feeling physically ill ( _He probably feels the same_ , a small, bitter part of her reminds her).

A sigh left Rachel’s lips.

“My mother and I lived alone for as long as I remember.”, she started. She licked her lips and closed her eyes before she continued. “She tried her best, but we were pretty poor. At least until she started working for the Waynes. They were pretty nice to her. She was allowed to bring me to work, which meant she could work longer. They also paid pretty well.”

She swallowed roughly and started digging her nails into her arm. Why was it still so hard to talk about this? She wanted to stop, to tell Jon to go fuck himself, but she had started now. She felt like she was in a trance, unable to stop talking. _Oversharing._ , the rational part of her brain made itself known. _Haven’t done that in quite some time._

“I had never met my father before. Apparently, he was poor too, and he worked for the mob. Pretty low-level, though. Poverty made him turn to crime, and once my mum got pregnant, he left. He-”

Rachel started pinching her arm to stop herself from crying. If she couldn’t stop talking, she at least didn’t want to cry in front of him.

“In the years that had passed - I was eight then, I think - his situation had only gotten worse. I only learned about that afterwards, but apparently he was a drug addict - and he had lost his job. He must have heard that my mum was working for the Waynes now. He probably - probably thought he could get some of the money or something. My mum though - Well, she didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want him in her life, much less in _mine_. So she didn’t answer when he started calling. I noticed something was wrong, she was clearly acting off. The whole situation must’ve been very hard for her.”

She let her gaze wander off to the side, to the window. It was still raining outside. How fitting. Her voice was merely a whisper now, but she didn’t notice. She was talking more to herself than to Jon at this point, anyway.

“One day, I was walking home from school. My mum had said she wanted to pick me up from that day on, but I forgot about it and was already gone when she arrived. I - I don’t really remember how it happened really. He - my father, that is - well, he kidnapped me, basically. Probably to blackmail my mum for money - it, it was a stupid plan really, but he was desperate. I don’t think he even had any weapons or anything.”

She felt Jon move next to her, but she was too deep into talking to really register it.

“He - he brought me into his home. It was dirty and smelled bad. There were clothes and other clutter everywhere. He tied me to a chair in the kitchen, and I remember that I almost puked from the smell. Everything was rotting. On the table was - tons of food in various states of decay.”

Another memory of Arkham’s basement flashed through her mind (a mask, and squirming, and blue-) and Rachel tried her best to suppress it. _I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid anymore._

“There were maggots and flies everywhere. The whole table was crawling.”

She paused and looked up to the ceiling.

“Nothing much happened after that. I don’t know how long I sat there. He didn’t try to talk to me and I didn’t talk to him. Hell, I didn’t even know he was my father until later. The police arrived sometime and they took him. As far as I know, he’s still in jail for the various things he’s done.”

The face of her mother appeared in her memory, hysterically crying when the cops had gotten her out of there. She had hugged Rachel so tight she felt like her back would break. She remembered thinking how odd it was that her mum reacted so strongly when she herself hadn’t. It hadn’t been all that bad after all. She had just sat around for a few hours. (Alone, with a man she hadn’t known. Tied up. Crawling things right in front of her.)

She went to take another sip from her mug, only to discover that her tea had turned cold. How long had she been talking?

“Hmm.”, Jon hummed after a small pause and only then did Rachel remember that he was still there. “I wouldn’t call that ‘nothing much’. Or a ‘normal childhood’, for that matter.”

She remembered why she had started talking about this in the first place. The sly bastard! She had wanted to know more about /him/, and for some reason he had gotten _her_ to open up. She really had to be more careful with her words around him.

She stood up from the bed without looking at him. She knew what his expression would most likely look like, and she really didn’t want to see it. Curiosity. Some twisted sort of hunger. She swallowed.

“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. My mum is dead and I will probably never see my father again.”

With that, she left for the kitchen to rinse her now empty mug. She did feel kind of sick now, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> My brain: so how many of your personal Rachel headcanons do you want to put into this?  
> Me: yes.
> 
> I hc that Rachel's mum died between the events of the first and second movie, btw.


End file.
